Welcome to DeepSkies!

I am Rick Towns, an amateur astronomer who lives in Canada. I enjoy observing with my telescopes, using my microscope to peek in on a hidden world, and enjoy practising Buddhism. I have a new website: ricktowns.com, where most of my personal pages are now located. This site will be dedicated entirely to astronomy, and specifically to the Deep Sky Atlas I have been working on.

Deep Sky Atlas

Several years ago I became interested in programming astronomy software and learning how to convert an object’s coordinates (right ascension and declination) to the x/y coordinates on a computer screen. It took a long time, but thanks to some help from others (Philippe Deverchère, Patrick Chevalley, and Chris Marriott) and using the book Astronomical Algorithms by Jean Meeus I was able to make it happen!

Observing Targets

Many astronomers have favourite books that catalog all manner of interesting objects in the sky. For me, it is certainly Burnham’s Celestial Handbook. I have others I like as well (Norton’s, Turn Left At Orion, Cosmic Challenge – to name a few), but what I really like is a definitive list of objects to look at in the sky. I have started that – building a list of targets in each constellation which I (and you!) can use while observing.

Messier Marathon

Usually twice a year (once in Spring and once in Fall) you have the opportunity to view all 110 of Charles Messier’s objects in one night of viewing. It takes quite a bit of preparation and even some practice – but it can be done! I have put together a quick and easy-to-follow guide that will hopefully help you in accomplishing this gold standard endeavour of amateur astronomy.

Astronomy Code

Are you interested in writing your own astronomy software? The biggest hurdle is to convert the celestial coordinates of sky objects (like stars, planets, galaxies, etc) into the x/y screen coordinates that your computer understands. Here’s a code snippet calling such a function:

void somefunction() {

    COORDS skyCoords;
	
    /* convert coordinates for star Deneb in constellation Cygnus */
    skyCoords = eqConvert(310.3579167, 45.28027778);

    /* now turn on the pixel! */
    SetPixel(hDc, skyCoords.x, skyCoords.y, RGB(255, 255, 255));
    
    /* etc... */
    
}

You can write the code behind that snippet and perhaps build the next super astronomy app!